Masterchef Junior
My mother always touts the expression some people live to eat, and others eat to live (which I’m now learning is something Benjamin Franklin said??! 1 ). I picked option 1. So many childhood anecdotes of mine begin or end around a plate of food.
I love to cook! It’s not an unusual attribute, if you know much about my life. But it has evolved into a passion large enough to deserve its own blog post. It’s hard to entangle my love for food just enough to trace it but not over intellectualise it. Here’s an attempt at it anyway:
A toddler in 2005 over her breakfast plate wrinkles her nose and looks at her father. “Papa, no ginger!” she scoffs as she pushes the plate towards him. He laughs as he realises that the silly 4 year old wants her tomato khatta 2 made again because he didn’t add an ingredient he didn’t even realise she could taste.
A child in 2010 stumbles over her words. She still isn’t too comfortable talking to her relatives – growing up in a metropolitan 1400 Km away can have that effect.3 But when she sits cross-legged on a small square mat, woven from the multi colour strands of plastic bags, and holds an empty plate to her dadi she unlocks a universal language. She realises that words are not the only way you can show your appreciation to others.
A sulky teen in 2015 walks across the grocery store alongside her father. It’s their Sunday routine– driving from one store to the next in Indiranagar searching for the best ingredients. “Namdhari’s for the bird's eye chillies and HOPCOMS 4 for papayas.” He sends her to fetch ingredients and she obliges; but they both know she’s growing out of this routine. Her schedule will soon be filled with exams and dance classes and it’ll be a long time before the grocery store becomes her refuge again.
A broke student in 2020 finds herself across the world. With her weekly $25 budget, she heads to the store. When she Whatsapps a picture of her first meal, fried bits of zucchini, to her parents they laugh and comment that she didn’t use any oil! Her suffering is soon forgotten though because there will be a pandemic. She’ll be back home and life will once again be lavish and gastronomic– pork chops, Thai curries, agalpuri 5 mutton, prawn gambas and more.
An adult(!) in 2025 has collected all the tools, utensils and ingredients she loves. Her kitchen consists of a fridge overflowing with produce, a freezer preserving her mother's bandekai masala, and an IKEA bookshelf filled with spices. Cooking is a meditation, it unlocks all her senses. She needs this to escape the feeling of being locked in her back pain.
My passion for food included developing a discerning taste, following my cultural roots, creating snacky meditations, channeling creativity, fueling my community, learning about protein, experimenting with plant-based food, and long, soul nourishing trips to grocery stores. Food is my love letter & metaphor of choice, it’s just taken writing here to realise that its primary recipient is my father.
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/115710-eat-to-live-don-t-live-to-eat↩
My dad is from a state in East India called Orissa. Tomato khatta (translates poorly to sour tomatoes) is the “salsa” or “shakshuka” of the state– a staple, simple, saucy tomato dish.↩
Distance between Bangalore and Balangir↩
HOPCOMS (Horticultural Producers' Co-operative Marketing and Processing Society) is a farmers' cooperative in Karnataka, India that sells fresh fruits and vegetables.↩
Agalpuri mutton is my dad’s default mutton recipe. It’s named after the region he’s from but the recipe has evolved over the years and is now more his than Agalpur’s.↩